The Elimination Of Fraudulent Spending In Automated Expense Report Software

Fraudulent behavior is an unfortunate procedure that can be prevalent in a business. A study conducted in 2014 by an auditing and expense management group took a look at over 160,000 employees traveling and filing their expense reports over a three month period. While the majority of workers were honest with their financial activity, over $13.7 million dollars in fraudulent expense reports were also discovered. Taking this same experiment and observing it over an entire year with more employees would result in catastrophic losses.

There can be serious ramifications if your expense reports are not honest and accurate. In 2014, we saw two senators from the Canadian government charged with fraud. Both Senator Patrick Brazeau and ex-Senator Mac Harb were caught claiming improper living and travel expenses. They claimed reimbursement for travel and housing expenses for secondary residences near the national capital, Ottawa, even as they in fact lived there full-time. This deception of trust cost them in the end, but not everyone gets caught. If you run a business, you need to make sure that your employee’s expense reports are truthful and cannot be tampered with.

An automated expense report system can severely reduce the amount of fraudulent expense reporting. Because expense reports can be filed as they happen, the information is available to accounts and finance people the moment it is entered, meaning they can review reports immediately rather than having to wait until the end of the month. Policies can also be configured within the software itself, so that any expense report made that doesn’t comply with a company’s limitations can be immediately flagged and investigated. Thanks to the analytics found in the software, you are able to look at the “big data” and see how company travel expenses are being used, making it much easier to track down repeat offenders.

Fraud is a serious problem for any company to face. However, new technologies and automated software have made it easier for people to understand how their finances in a company are moving. This is a more accurate method, allowing you to track where some unethical employees are trying to exploit the system for their own ends. If you’re a business-owner struggling with expense reports, it may be wise to look into the many automated expense report softwares. It is something that can really benefit you in the long run.